


the well-worn pages of my favorite book

by elsaclack



Series: collateral beauty [3]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Originally Posted on Tumblr, basically i'm extra and wrote this in 3 hours, because......of reasons, inspired by that throw-away line from the audit, the infamous small bookstore au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 14:46:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10766412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsaclack/pseuds/elsaclack
Summary: "How dare you tempt me with a small bookstore!"





	the well-worn pages of my favorite book

**Author's Note:**

> yeah hey so basically i wrote this in 3 hours because i love a good au and also i used to work in a bookstore so,,,,,,what do u kno here i am

The most beautiful woman Jake has ever seen in his entire life is standing on the sidewalk outside of the bookstore across the street from Sal’s.

He’s staring, his slice of pepperoni pizza frozen halfway between his greased-up paper plate and his mouth (which is currently hanging open - either in preparation for this bite or due to his sudden and forceful mesmerization, he’ll never really know), and Charles hasn’t noticed yet. Jake’s hyper-aware of him, of the buzz of his voice, reduced to a low hum in his own ears now; to his left, Gina is slumped over, visibly bored with the conversation and thus completely invested in her phone.

 _Good_ , Jake thinks rather weakly. _One less person to notice_.

The woman across the street appears to be scrubbing one of the front windows meticulously, and in some distant part of Jake’s mind he recalls the business that previously occupied that very stoop - a tattoo parlor with a penchant for filling the windows with bumper stickers. The woman keeps having to toss handfuls of long, glossy black hair over her shoulder; as he watches, she finally appears to get sick of it all and ties it all back in a messy bun down near the nape of her neck, and the wisps of hair she misses curl lazily against the long column of her neck.

She is completely and utterly breathtakingly beautiful, and he hasn’t even gotten more than a glimpse at her profile.

“Jake?” Charles finally manages to break through the reverie. The half-eaten slice of pizza in Jake’s hand falls with a dull splat against the plate, and Jake scrambles for a napkin, desperately ignoring the heat rising up his cheeks. Gina looked up the moment she heard the pizza fall and from his peripheral vision Jake can see Charles turning toward the front windows, curious about the fixation of Jake’s thousand-yard stare, and Jake loudly clears his throat. “Were you staring at that woman over there?” Charles asks.

Something dangerous flashes in Charles’ eyes - something that speaks of over-investment, of moony emotions and love-sick declarations that Jake hasn’t heard since before Sophia dumped him a year earlier. “No,” Jake says, inwardly wincing at the defensive forcefulness to the word. “I was just - I zoned out, and she happened to be in my line of sight.”

“Nuh-uh,” Gina clicks her tongue, lowering her phone to the table for the first time since arriving. “I know a turned-on Jake when I see one -”

“Um, _ew_ -”

“Oh, _as if_ , Peralta. You forget I’ve known you since day _one_ , son. I remember Ethan Brown’s Bar Mitzvah. You had to spend half the night in the bathroom after catching _one look_ at Jenny Gildenhorn -”

“Blaspheming temptress!” Charles hisses.

“- in the dress she wore that night. Idiots.” Gina sniffs, the last word mostly directed across the table at Charles. “You think that chick is hot.”

He opens his mouth to protest, but his face may as well be a volcano for the amount of heat he can feel radiating from it. “Fine, _yes_ , I think she’s hot, _but_ I haven’t even gotten a look at her face yet - for all I know she could be a complete _gargoyle_ -”

“Doubt it.” Gina mutters, now craning in her seat to get a look around Charles. “Nope, I know a hot girl when I see one, and that is a hot girl.” She straightens suddenly, dragging herself up toward him so that she’s leaned into his space. “You should go talk to her.”

“What? No way, that’s - that’s _insanely_ creepy -”

“I said _talk_ to her, not grope her in broad daylight.”

“I think it could be good for you, Jakey,” Charles chimes in, and Jake scrubs both hands over his face. “You haven’t really been putting yourself out there since Sophia. I mean, what’s the harm in going over and saying hi? It’s not like that woman’s your _soulmate_ -”

“She _could_ be -”

Jake drops both hands to his lap, letting his palms slap loudly enough against his thighs that Charles and Gina fall silent at once. “Alright, alright! Will you two just play it cool?” He snaps, meaning to glare at Charles but finding his gaze drawn up and over Charles’ head when the woman across the street moves two feet to her right and stretches up to her toes, clearly struggling to reach something. “I’ll - I’ll go by tomorrow -”

“Nope.” Gina stands, her chair protesting loudly against the grimy tiled floor beneath her, slinging her purse over her shoulder and starting toward the door in one fluid motion.

“Gina!” Jake shouts, but it’s too late, she’s already out the door and on the corner, glancing both ways, stepping off the curb. “Crap, _crap_ , sorry Charles -”

Jake takes off after her, shoving through the door and all-out sprinting across the street. “Hi!” Gina calls brightly just as Jake catches up to her. She manages to pull her arm from his grasp as the woman turns around, and once again Jake finds himself knocked breathless. She is _ethereal_. “I’m Gina, and this is my friend Jake. We were across the street at Sal’s,” Gina points over her shoulder, “and we saw you livin’ that hashtag _struggle_ life trying to reach…whatever you’re trying to reach.”

The woman laughs, and even though it rings with a strange mixture of nervousness and exhaustion, it’s the absolute best thing Jake has ever heard. “Yeah, I guess the last tenants were really tall. I can’t really reach,” she looks up over her right shoulder, and when Jake manages to tear his gaze away from her face, he spots a long, faded black smear across the glass. “I could just go inside and get the ladder, but I’ve got paint cans on it right now and I just haven’t convinced myself that it’s worth the effort yet.”

Gina nods slowly, as if it’s the most interesting thing she’s ever heard, and secretly Jake’s rather proud of her because he could feel her struggling not to interrupt and loudly proclaim her story to be the most boring story in all the land (a fate Charles suffers on a near-daily basis). “Sounds like you need someone tall.” Gina says, and that molten heat shoots up from somewhere near the pit of Jake’s stomach and engulfs his face once again. “Hey - _Jake’s_ tall! Jake, you should help my new friend…”

“Amy.” Amy steps toward them, shifting the dirty rag in her right hand to her left to shake his hand. Her palm is warm and soft and smooth and Jake’s throat tightens and dries up all at once.

Objectively, it’s rather pathetic. A pretty girl tells him her name and he’s made completely speechless.

“Amy,” Jake repeats in a rasp, and when he clears his throat he sees a flash of something in Amy’s eyes - something oddly familiar, something warm and shy and oh-so promising. “I’m Jake.”

“Nice to meet you Jake.” Amy says, cheeks dimpling in a smile that is both small and secret, and Jake’s certain that his heart is about to beat directly out of his chest. “Would you mind helping me?”

He’s only a few inches taller than Amy, really, but he nods enthusiastically and takes the rag from her. She stays close by, hovering less than a foot away, and he nearly loses his cool when he feels her breath through his flannel warming his shoulder. Clearly he’s waited far too long to put himself back out there if all it takes to get him going is a woman literally _breathing_ on him.

God, Gina’s never gonna let him live this down.

He somehow manages to scrub that mark away without completely making a fool of himself, which really is an Olympic-level accomplishment. He rocks back on his heels and hands the rag back over reluctantly, feeling a rush of desperation, words sticking in his throat and nearly choking him. Amy’s looking at him with that same little smile and he’s ready to make a complete and total fool of himself if that’s what it takes to keep it there, to make it grow.

“Thank you,” Amy says, glancing down at the rag. The broken eye-contact gives him enough of a respite to realize that at some point, Gina had disappeared; the urge to shoot the bird in Sal’s general direction is astronomical, but Amy looks back up at him before he gets the chance.

“You’re welcome,” Jake says, “are you - do you, uh, do you need…help? With anything else?”

“Oh, I don’t want to keep you from -”

“You can keep me. Um, I mean -” she giggles, and he wants to die. “Gina, she - we were with another friend and they - they’ll be fine. I can - I don’t mind. Helping you. I don’t mind helping you out if you need another person to help you with - tall things.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

She seems to consider him for a moment, and then her cheeks dimple again. “Yeah, I - I mean, I’ve got a ton of stuff to do before I can open this place up. I was gonna blackmail by brothers into helping me but…” she trails, and it takes every ounce of self-control he has not to nod enthusiastically. “I could pay you.”

“I accept cash, Visa, and payment in the form of Sal’s pizza.”

She laughs, loud and genuine, and an actual real-life chill races up his spine. “Cash and pizza it is.”

“What’s this place gonna be, anyways?”

“A small bookstore.” She says as she leads him up the stairs and through the propped-open front door. The room has been cleared of all the old tattoo chairs and workstations, the floors covered in paint-drip stained tarps, and in the far corner he can see the ladder she mentioned set up near a half-painted wall. “I…keep getting too excited and switching from one project to another,” she says quietly, and when he glances at her she looks embarrassed. It’s _ridiculously_ endearing.

“You’re trying to do this by yourself?” He asks.

He regrets it immediately. The defensiveness in her gaze is undeniable, and suddenly he wonders how many times she’s been asked that question throughout this whole process. “I _am_ doing this by myself.” She says, haughty and firm, and he wishes he could backtrack completely to relive that moment when she laughed and the entire universe made sense.

“No, of course, I’m sorry, I - I just meant, _this_ ,” he gestures around the room. “The painting and the building and stuff. It’s a lot for one person to take on.” Her gaze softens, and relief floods his system.

“I’ve got seven brothers who’ve all volunteered to drop by in the next couple of weeks to help me paint and build shelves and get the stock out and organized, but honestly…I was too excited to wait for them. I mean, technically, this place has only been mine for an hour.”

“Wow.” Jake murmurs. Amy smiles at him, bright and proud, and his heart skips a beat. “Have you thought of a name yet?”

“Not yet.” She seems unperturbed, but Jake detects a flash of something in her eyes - he wonders how much of an issue she really finds it to be. “It’ll come to me eventually. I just need to make sure it’s the perfect name.”

He smiles at her, and then turns on his heel slowly, letting his gaze sweep over every inch of the room. “It’s a really nice spot, Amy,” he says, and when he turns back to face her she’s flushed and beaming. “Really, really beautiful,” he murmurs without thinking. 

Her smile turns shy again, bashful almost, and Jake swears his heart his soaring.

“Alright, put me to work. What do you need me to do first, boss?”

* * *

 

“I’m gonna need you to stop moving the Spiderman graphic novels to the classics display.”

Jake snickers, earning him a stern look and a sharp smack to the upper arm from Amy. He senses the amusement in her gaze - buried deep beneath the annoyance - so he knows it’s not serious enough to warrant a legitimate apology. “One of these days, you’re gonna recognize the _true_ classics, babe.” He declares, delighting in her responding eye-roll. “What the hell even _is Othello_?”

“Oh, my God,” she mutters, pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index finger. Jake snorts and leans back against the back counter, watching her check her inventory list against the shipment’s invoice, wondering how out-of-line it would be for him to sidle up behind her to massage her shoulders. “I think I’m missing a box of _Maze Runners_ ,” she mumbles over her shoulder.

“Oh, I think Gina was using it as a step ladder over in the yoga and meditation section.”

“What? _Why_? And _how_? I changed the locks on the stock room _last week_ , how did she already -”

“Rosa.” 

“ _Rosa_.”

He smirks and moves toward her, crowding her up against the front counter and grinning when she doesn’t even try to fight him off. “D’you want me to arrest them?” He asks quietly.

She nods, face contorted in an exaggerated pout. “Throw them in jail forever,” she says, turning so that her lower back is pressed into the desk and draping both arms over his shoulders. He leans in and kisses her, relishing in the slow-moving heat that has not faded yet in the two years between this kiss and the first time he kissed her or the hundreds of kisses in between. She sighs when he pulls away, fingers brushing absently through his hair, and good grief he is in love with this bookworm nerd of a woman.  

“Will you please go rescue my books back from Rosa?”

“Anything for you, sweetheart.”

She pulls a face and pushes him away. “Gross.” she mutters, and he laughs.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?” Jake calls loudly enough to fill the store as he marches off into the shelves. “I’d like to report a theft in the Ninety-Ninth Bookstore across the street from the world’s greatest pizza shop. I got eyes on the thief, it’s a, uh, _really_ scary-lookin’ chick with _crazy_ hair who could _probably_ kill me if she wanted to -”

“I can and I will.” Rosa deadpans from three aisles over.

“It’s become a hostage situation, she’s holding these damn children’s books hostage -” a hardcover book smacks against the shelf behind him, passing just inches away from his ear, and he ducks. “She’s armed! _Armed and dangerous_ -”

“Out! All of you, out, I closed an hour ago, get out.”

It takes a few minutes, but Amy finally manages to round Gina, Rosa, Charles (who somehow fell asleep in the children’s section while trying to decide between two books for Nikolaj), and Jake all up and herd them to the door. “I don’t have to go, though, right?” Jake asks as she shoves him forward.

“You’re the instigator,” she says very seriously, “you _absolutely_ have to go.”

He covers his heart with one hand, mock hurt crossing his face. “You’ve wounded me, madam.”

“I’ll make it up to you later.”

“ _Die Hard_ and makin’ out of the couch?”

“And Sal’s for dinner.”

She winks as he grins, and then he swoops in for one last kiss. “You know me so well.” He murmurs as he pulls away.

“Mm, I do.” She hums. He dives in one last time to kiss her cheek and then backs out to the stoop outside the front door. “I’ll be home in less than an hour.”

“I love you.”

The phrase still feels new, a bit foreign on his tongue, but he gets a thrill every time he’s said it since that very first time eight months previously. Mostly because of the way she looks at him after each time - with that same shy, bashful smile she had on her face that very first day they met. “I love you, too,” she says softly, and his insides are made of jelly.

“ _Boo_ ,” Gina jeers from the sidewalk, and both Jake and Amy roll their eyes in tandem.

“See you at home,” Jake says as he backs down the front steps. He waits until the door is firmly shut and locked, until she’s peering out through the blinds and waving, before turning on his heel to catch up with the others. “Gina! Hey, wait up.”

“What?” Gina grunts. “If you make me mess up my high score on Ballz -” 

“I’m sorry, _what_ is the name of that game?”

“Don’t worry about it, what do you want?”

“I, uh - I’ve sort of been thinking - well, first of all,” he purposefully slows his steps, ignoring Rosa jostling into him and Charles slipping by. Gina slows down too, until there’s a good five-foot distance between them and the others. “I never actually thanked you for forcing me to talk to Amy that one afternoon,”

Gina rolls her eyes, but when she looks at him again, he sees the sincerity.

“So since…since you’re kind of, uh, responsible for - for introducing us, I was wondering…I took tomorrow off of work, but I didn’t tell Amy, because - well, I’m…I’m…”

“Shut up, you’re proposing?”

Genuine excitement radiates off of her frame, and Jake can’t help it - he beams. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m gonna propose to Amy. And I was wondering if you would help me look for a ring tomorrow.”

“Um, _yeah_ I’m gonna help you pick out a ring, are you insane? You really think I’m gonna let you propose to a girl without my approval on that ring?”

“I mean, it’s kind of _technically_ my choice -”

“Aw,” she steps toward him and lightly pats his cheek. “You keep thinking that, sweetheart.”

He opens his mouth to protest, but thinks better of it at the last second. “Thanks, Gina." He says instead. "For everything.”

A real, genuine smile flashes across her face. “I’m really proud of you, kiddo.” She says softly. “And I’m especially proud of _me_ and my _amazing_ Cupid skills. I should open a business.”

“Oh, God, just - help me with the ring first, and then start working on that, okay?”

“You got it, Romeo.”

“Did you know they both die?”

“Who, Romeo and Juliet?”

“Yeah.”

“For serious? They _die_? Why do people never shut up about them?”

“That’s what I said! Amy tried to explain it once but I just don’t _get it_!”

“Ugh, okay, forget I said anything. You guys aren’t Romeo and Juliet, you’re…um…Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman.”

“I don’t know who either of those people are.”

“Startin’ to _seriously_ reconsider helping you.”


End file.
